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Gnomes will "win" this poll by a landslide. There was a similar poll three weeks ago (give or take a week)

Indeed, no niche.

Rav

"The best advice I ever got was from an elephant trainer in the jungle outside Bangalore. I was doing a hike through the jungle as a tourist. I saw these large elephants tethered to a small stake. I asked him, 'How can you keep such a large elephant tied to such a small stake?' He said, 'When the elephants are small, they try to pull out the stake, and they fail. When they grow large, they never try to pull out the stake again.' That parable reminds me that we have to go for what we think we're fully capable of, not limit ourselves by what we've been in the past." -Vivek Paul

Doesn't surprise me, I too have never used them. Considering that we have Halflings and Dwarves, it is difficult to fit another race of short, fun loving, miner/craftsmen in. I do use Gnomes as a "monster" race, but I have determined that they are too rare to be a viable PC race. (I run a game where the PCs come from fairly normal backgrounds, and are shaped in powerful heroes, I don't really like the idea that PCs should start as super-men or feakish outcasts as has been the trend in RPGs lately.

If you want to get technical, I don't use Half-elves either. I have a race called Endra (A term I picked up in online greyhawk circles some time ago, but have forgotten the source, so apologies to the original author) that are mechanically identical to half-elves. In game though, they are a distinct race, and not halfbreeds. I do allow Half-Orcs on the theory that Orcs are human like enough to be consider simply an offshoot Homo-Sapien breed, and not another race entirely, like elves.

Oh, and about Drow. I agree. They were very cool as a monster. They are pretty lame as a PC class. I don't like the idea of PCs being evil to the core, and IMO, Drow as a race are inherently and utterly evil, like Illithids or Red Dragons. In my game, you might encounter a nuetral or even good aligned orc, goblin or kobold now and then, but you will never find a non-evil Drow, period. I know this isn't a popular opinion, but it is my game, and rule 0 outweighs any argument about how ECL justifies Drow wonkiness.

If one of my players wants to play the angsty hero (read, drizzt like, a good guy from a evil civilization) I tell them to play a character raised by the Scarlet Brotherhood, or brought up as a slave in the Pomarj, or born into the infernal mess that is Iuz' empire. If they still demand that a Drow is the only way to go, I start to question why they really want to play it, which does in fact lead to mind words like "munchkin"...

What are they? Magic people who also like to use gears and stuff? I'm not a Weiss-Hickman fan, but at least they did something with the race. As it is you can't play a gnome without stepping on dwarf, elf, or halfling turf.

Personally, I like the idea of evil gnomes who experiment with the undead. Call them "Gnecromancers". But a race of happy-go-lucky tricksters who -- for reasons that can only be describes as "because its in the rules" -- also like machinery.

I removed them from my campaign setting because I didn't think of the "gnecromancer" idea until much later. Sorry, gnome lovers.

Oh, and drow? The ECL doesn't make up for that magic resistence. I say remove the magic resistance from player drow. Have something sufficently silly like once a drow sees the light of the sun their magic resistance leaves them. But their have been worse player-races. Consider the flumph ...

"I asked Dave to please send me his rules additions, for I thought a whole new system should be developed. A few weeks after his visit I received 18 or so handwritten pages of rules and notes pertaining to his campaign, and I immediately began work on a brand new manuscript. "Greyhawk" campaign started —the first D&D campaign! About three weeks later, I had some 100 typewritten pages, and we began serious play-testing in Lake Geneva, while copies were sent to the Twin Cities and to several other groups for comment. DUNGEONS & DRAGONS had been born."
— EGG, Dragon #7

I can't believe this! I love gnomes! Why is it the they have to have a niche? Humans don't have a niche! I don't think races should have a single, defining characteristic (grumpy, magic, violent, short), they should be different in many ways. A race seems pretty boring to me if they're just humans with an extreme of a physical or mental characteristic.